SLEEP-WAKING 653 



pupil dilated and apparently insensible. Generally they were 

 closed, and that they then were extremely sensible would appear, 

 because she almost invariably supposed it was day, and when 

 advised to retire usually replied, " What, go to bed in the 

 day-time?" Once, in the darkness of night, while preparing 

 dinner, she observed a lamp alight and put it out, saying she did 

 not know why people wished to keep a lamp burning in the 

 daytime ; and once, when the light of a lamp was reflected on 

 the closed eyelid by a concave mirror, so diffused that the 

 illuminated space could scarcely be distinguished, it caused a shock 

 of such severity that she exclaimed, " Why do you wish to shoot 

 me in the eyes." Some uneasiness was produced even when she 

 was awake, although the experiment produced no pain in the 

 eyes of the reporter. It is particularly worthy of notice, that 

 once when she was writing out a song, with a black silk handker- 

 chief stuffed with cotton bound over her eyes, and a person 

 interposed a piece of brown paper between her eyes and the 

 paper on which she was writing, she seemed disturbed and cried 

 out, " Don't, don't." An apple being held before her, but 

 higher than her eyes, which were well bandaged, she raised her 

 head, as any one would if desirous of looking at something above 

 him, and when asked its colour, answered correctly. She learnt 

 backgammon in her sleep, and so well and quickly that she soon 

 beat Dr. Butler, an experienced player : sometimes, like many 

 somnambulists, she displayed an astonishing power of mimickry, 

 though she never exhibited the smallest trace when awake. Her 

 personality was double, for she recollected from paroxysm to 

 paroxysm and forgot all in her waking state : playing back- 

 gammon, for instance, better in the second paroxysm in which she 

 attempted it, and, when the paroxysm was over, declaring she never 

 saw it played, and not knowing even how to set the men. The 

 paroxysms were attended by pain, at an invariable spot in the left 

 side of the head, often so excruciating, that she used to cry out, 

 " It ought to be cut open, it ought to be cut open." As her 

 sleep-waking became less perfect, her face less flushed, and her 

 head less painful, she required more light : for once she declared, 

 in her paroxysm, that she could not read with her eyes shut ; 

 and, when the doctor placed his fingers before her eyes, she 

 could not read a word and said it was total darkness. 



Lest, however, such cases as the four last should be doubted 



